Useful things for the OLPC

A collection of hints, tips, and how-tos that I've found useful during the first few weeks with my OLPC, which I hope will be of use to others...

OLPC daily news

OS and firmware versions

On more recent builds, use "About this XO" from the mouse-over menu on the XO logo in the centre of the main sugar screen

note if you are upgrading the Operating System, you don't need to separately update the firmware: it gets done at the same time as the OS upgrade.
In fact, on a machine that hasn't been unlocked with a developer key, there are no bootfw.zip files available for the signed firmware image since Q2D18, so it looks like you can't upgrade the firmware independently of the OS.

firmware

sudo cat /ofw/openprom/model

operating system

cat /etc/issue
cat /boot/olpc_build

screenshots

alt + 1

Connect to a jabber server

1. Go to the terminal window.
2. sugar-control-panel -g jabber (hint: type sugar-co then hit tab to complete the command)
   will display your current setting.
3. sugar-control-panel -s jabber server_name
   will connect to a (special for OLPC) Jabber server.
4. Reboot Sugar with CTRL-ALT-ERASE (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE in an emulator session)

port is 5223 note references to xochat.org should be ignored as this server is not avaibable any longer.

compiling C on the OLPC

setting time zone and Daylight Saving

sugar-control-panel -g timezone

sugar-control-panel -h timezone

su
sugar-control-panel -s timezone Europe/London

date --set "10:06"
^d

Daylight Saving / Summer Time

Note that the OLPC wiki assures us that
You needn't worry about any possible Daylight Saving Time; the OLPC handles this very well with no human intervention.
However, that's not true. The /etc/localtime file that ships with the XO is woefully useless for setting Daylight Saving.

What you have to do is to create a symlink from /etc/localtime to the correct timezone file in /usr/share/zoneinfo

For example, for people living in the UK:

su -l
cd /etc
mv localtime old.localtime

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB localtime
^d

BTW, to see what the localtime and zoneinfo files are saying, use zdump:

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2008

keyboard shortcuts

quit activity ctrl-esc

full screen mode alt-enter

tray visibility alt-space

ctrl-alt-erase - restart sugar

installing new stuff

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

firmware

testing suspend resume mode

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tests/Suspend_Resume

install perl

su
yum install perl

battery life

sensors

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure/Projects

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/Sensors

speech synthesiser

xoblog

video

Try either Ogle (http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/)
MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html)
or VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-fedora.html)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure/Hardware

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=908.0

mplayer

su
cd /bin
wget http://www.orderedpixels.com/xo/mplayer/mplayer.tar.bz2
tar vxf mplayer.tar.bz2

Setup subtitle support:

mkdir -p ~/.mplayer
ln -s /usr/share/fonts/dejavu-lgc/DejaVuLGCSans.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

To run:

mplayer -fs /media/[medianame]/[filename]

microscope

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3765

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Microscope

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ#What_does_.22Register.22_.28in_Home_view.29_do.3F

wireless

su -l
/sbin/iwconfig eth0 mode managed essid 
/sbin/dhclient eth0
exit

proxy settings for browser

pref("network.proxy.http",  "<set to your proxy server>"); 
pref("network.proxy.http_port",  <set to 8080 or the appropriate port>); 
pref("network.proxy.type",1);

pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "<your proxy>");

or in browser - about:config - can't change the values in the current version, so this doesn't work

network.proxy.http       <set to your proxy server>
network.proxy.http_port  <set to 8080 or the appropriate port>
network.proxy.type       <change to 1>

getting wireless working with WEP and a key slot other than 1 (e.g. 4)

su -l
iwconfig eth0 key [4] 10hexdigits
iwconfig eth0 key [4]

screen display

tam tam stuff

mini tamtam demo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=31L9qaxOrp0&feature=related

synthlab demo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwqt8NMT-zI

etoys
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T40RG2FqjOc&NR=1

USB serial port

su -l 
chmod go+rw to enable everyone to talk to it

su -l
yum install picocom

picocom -b 9600 /dev/ttyUSB0

to run it as user olpc, need to chmod o+w /var/lock so picocom can create the lock file:

su -l 
chmod o+w /var/lock

ssh daemon

set olpc user password as root

su -l 
passwd olpc

now you can ssh in ssh -l olpc <OLPC's IP address>

spy camera / motion detector

http://www.earobinson.org/2008/02/09/olpc-spy-cam/

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/MotionDetection

aeroplane mode

sugar-control-panel -s radio off
sugar-control-panel -s radio on 

helpful notes from someone else

• Reorder activities
• feh
• mplayer
• flash
• tmobile registration

feh image viewer

su
yum install feh
exit

feh -F -D 5 --scale-down /media/SD

feh -F -D 3 -r -z -Z --scale-down --hide-pointer <top level directory of images>

-F    full screen
-D 3  3 sec / slide
-r    recurse
-z    randomise
-Z    stretch to fill full screen

feh -F -R 10 -Z http://<ip address>/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi

turn on right-mouse paste in terminal

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3 2"

to move apps around in the main list or to add new ones

/home/olpc/Activities/.defaults

and replace the entries in the order you want them.
So for example, you can move org.laptop.Terminal to the front of the list :)

This takes precedence over the master list at

/usr/share/sugar/data/activities.defaults

to find a list of installed activities

ls ~/.sugar/default

mp3 player

"buy" the decoder fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar.bz2 from https://shop.fluendo.com/

bunzip fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar.bz2
tar xvf fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar

mkdir ~/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins

cp fluendo-mp3-i386/libgstflump3dec.so .gstreamer-0.10/plugins

gst-inspect-0.10 flump3dec

gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=file:///path/to/file.mp3

Jim Gettys talk at MIT

Marvin Minsky

Dan Bricklin

active antenna

picture of the OLPC

I skewed the image so it's "square" again so you can display it on your OLPC, for example using FEH

Here's the XO children image

Display it with

feh -F -Z --hide-pointer XO_children.jpg

ad-hoc wireless

on Ubuntu laptop

sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager stop

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo iwconfig mode ad-hoc
sudo iwconfig essid 'olpc' (or whatever)
sudo iwconfig channel 4 (or whatever)

sudo ifconfig wlan0 11.0.0.1
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

run ~/perl/proxy/htty_proxy.pl

on OLPC

su -l
ifconfig eth0 down
iwconfig eth0 mode ad-hoc
iwconfig eth0 essid 'olpc' (or whatever)
iwconfig eth0 channel 4 (or whatever)

ifconfig eth0 11.0.0.2
ifconfig eth0 up

ping 11.0.0.1

~/.sugar/default/gecko/user.js

pref("network.proxy.http",  "11.0.0.1"); 
pref("network.proxy.http_port",  8080); 
pref("network.proxy.type",1);

Tony Pearson (IBM) on XO

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage?tag=OLPC

presentations

http://www.laptop.org.za/slides/olpc-dev-talk/presentation.html

remote display

Human Interface Guidelines

Instant Messaging on the XO

People seem to have various problems with this: what you actually have to do, is...

su
wget ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/releases/7/Everything/i386/os/Fedora/NetworkManager-glib-0.6.5-2.fc7.i386.rpm
rpm -vi NetworkManager-glib-0.6.5-2.fc7.i386.rpm
rm NetworkManager-glib-0.6.5-2.fc7.i386.rpm

yum install pidgin

or... (not tried this)

yum install finch

Kopete
This is a monster download (48meg!), which doesn't really seem in the spirit of OLPC, but hey, it works great!
http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1073.0

Updating to Version 1

su -l
olpc-update 703

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Update.1_Software_Release_Notes

Thomas Overton suggests the Peru Activity pack
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peru_activity_pack

need
http://laptop.org/peru-bundles.zip
and
http://laptop.org/signed-customization-2.zip

unzip onto USB stick

reboot with the USB key inserted.

Note: I had some trouble with memory sticks that were not "real" Windows-formatted VFAT format.
Ones that had been formatted to that from Linux failed to mount during the boot sequence

Sticky ctrl key on keyboard

http://bc.tech.coop/blog/080327.html1 http://bc.tech.coop/blog/080327.html1

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1961.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1961.0

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1906.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1906.0

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=696.0 http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=696.0

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Stuck_keys http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Stuck_keys